The Maddening Schizophrenia of US Incumbents

I must confess to a particular fondness for those moments of synchronicity when different news items happen to collide in the same cycle, violently contradicting each other. This week is a great example.

On Tuesday, Techzone 360 published a really interesting editorial entitled Shifting Towards Symmetry: The New Broadband Landscape. I strongly encourage you to read it, but here’s the elevator pitch: AT&T and Verizon have finally realized that symmetry not only sells but differentiates them from cable. Suddenly, after years of arguing users didn’t need it, they flip around and extoll its virtues. Of course, to you and me, that’s not an incredibly forward-thinking stance, but think about where they are coming from!

The fact is that the market has moved beyond copper, whether they like it or not. That’s why Verizon can aggressively push symmetry (they’ve shed a lot of their copper, and have fiber everywhere else). AT&T, as is clearly highlighted in the editorial isn’t quite so at ease, having a large FTTC footprint that most definitely doesn’t support symmetry.

Still, no matter what the reasons, we should applaud them for being so modern, right?

Not so fast! That same day Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin writes an article (AT&T and Verizon say 10Mbps is too fast for “broadband,” 4Mbps is enough) detailing how the same AT&T and Verizon are fighting the FCC tooth and nail to stop the regulator from increasing the requirements for a data service to be considered broadband. Today, 4Mbps down and 1 Mbps up is considered broadband, the FCC would like the download to go at least to 10Mbps and argues (quite convincingly) that you need that much for a perfectly normal evening at home. AT&T and Verizon are having none of it though, and their main argument is the same as ever (I quote AT&T): ” a 10Mbps service exceeds what many Americans need today”.

The real reason, again, is elsewhere: with a 10Mbps definition of broadband, suddenly the market doesn’t look so competitive anymore: 10% of users have no access to service and 30% only have one option for service. In other words, 40% of the market is either unserved or a monopoly. That doesn’t look so good…

So there you have it. PR schizophrenia at its most beautiful. I say the FCC should up the broadband requirements to a symmetrical 10Mbps. That should help AT&T and Verizon reconcile their paradoxical positions!